Alexander Mamut Quotes

The sight of parents, children and grandparents all descending on a tented field to enjoy the pleasure of ideas and books renews my faith in humanity.

I'll never forget a meeting with one publisher where they said, 'We don't publish books for teenage boys; teenage boys don't read.'

We live in a moment and a culture when reading is really endangered. There's simply no way to write well, though, if you're not reading well.

What I tend to get from America is very enthusiastic letters and e-mail from librarians and schoolteachers, the gatekeepers, though I hesitate to use that word. I've never been a huge seller.

There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

We have a host of English teachers in the family. My mum is an English teacher, and so are my dad, my aunt and my uncle. I have grown up with family writing competitions, and I can't remember a birthday or Christmas present that didn't include books.

I am a big advocate of the role of the bookstore in the community.

To be a writer, you must be a reader, yet as many as 30 per cent of my writing students were not readers.

If you're someone who reads, find someone who can't .... Join the community of conscience.

Among the earliest modern commodities were printed books … and their shrinking price and increased availability were far more historically momentous than, say, the spread of the internal combustion engine.

My grandfather and mother were school teachers, so there was always some discussion around books.

Anybody who puts a book into someone else's hands inspires me - teachers, librarians, booksellers, parents.

I've just always been a reader. My grandmother just expressed the importance of literacy, if I said that correctly. She just always expressed the importance of being able to write and being able to read.

I wouldn't be a very good writer if someone hadn't taught me how to read.

There are too many books. The books are terrible. And this is because you have been taught to have self-esteem.

A student can win twelve letters at a university without learning how to write one.

A house without books is a poor house, even if beautiful rugs are covering its floors and precious wallpapers and pictures cover its walls

Mother, I am young. Mother, I am just eighteen. I am strong. I will work hard, Mother. But I do not want this child to grow up just to work hard. What must I do, mother, what must I do to make a different world for her? How do I start?" "The secret lies in the reading and the writing. You are able to read. Every day you must read one page from some good book to your child. Every day this must be until the child learns to read. Then she must read every day, I know this is the secret

Reading is important. Books are important. Librarians are important. (Also, libraries are not child-care facilities, but sometimes feral children raise themselves among the stacks.)

Writing is the litmus paper of thoughtthe very center of schooling.

A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in the desert.

At the moment that we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold, that magic threshold into a library, we change their lives forever, for the better

The one thing I wished for my children is that they'd be readers.

I think if people read more, that is a better world.

There never yet have been, nor are there now, too many good books.